Mr. Padraic Kissane:

I have a wry smile on my face. One of the reasons I smile is that the bank is able to tell us it has provisioned €118 million but cannot tell us how many customers it affected. That does not add up. Which one is the guess? Is the guess the provisioning figure or the numbers of people that will come and tell us? Will they ask me to challenge the other 500 that might or might not be? The figures of provisioning came out. That is for accounting reasons and other broader aspects such as whether they are sold across the Irish banks and so forth. How can a bank provision a figure but not come into this room and tell us accurately how many it affected? The provisioning figure is the accurate one. They do not know how many children are in each of those family homes or how many properties are affected. It just goes on and on.

I will address one of the difficulties I had envisaged coming in today. I am talking about all of the banks and I have files here which are just reflective points across all of the banks. They arrive with their experts and they have been scripted. I have seen some of the letters written to the affected customers when the redress letters eventually started to arrive. When one reads them, one would start to think the problem was of the customers own making. They say they are very sorry for not having informed the customer correctly. There is a tone being used and it is all perfectly scripted. We know they are caught so they should just get on with it. They should man up. They have done the crime and should face up to it.